Before he become known on his own terms for being a kind of tightly wound guy who would go nuts on his family members or directors of photography at the slightest provocation, Christian Bale was well known as, well, a tightly wound guy who would go nuts on people, and then kill them. I'm talking, of course, about his role in American Psycho, in which he played the killer yuppie Patrick Bateman long before his Batman growl made him a household name.

And this week, for no evident reason, American Psycho director Mary Harron is coming forward with Bale's inspiration for the character-- and no, it's not his own endless supply of inner anger. "one day he called me and he had been watching Tom Cruise on David Letterman, and he just had this very intense friendliness with nothing behind the eyes, and he was really taken with this energy," Harron told Black Book.

I'm not really sure how to elaborate on that quote, other that to remark on how well Bale seems to get Cruise, that sense that he's happy and doesn't quite know why. I dare you to watch American Psycho again without thinking about this comparison.